Scott Brown, Elizabeth Warren now dueling populists

In a fierce fight to keep his job in deep-blue Massachusetts, the freshman GOP senator is shunning tea party Republicans who helped send him to Washington and embracing the same populist fervor that’s made Warren, his likely Democratic rival, a hero among liberals.

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Brown was the only Republican to back President Barack Obama’s pick for the consumer watchdog agency that Warren spearheaded. He was one of the first to jump on the bandwagon against congressional insider trading. And after he helped pass a piece of Obama’s jobs plan, Brown made sure he was standing by the president for the photo op.

Brown’s practically written the talking points for Democrats in this week’s showdown with Republicans over extending the payroll tax cut, one of Obama’s year-end legislative priorities.

“It angers me that House Republicans would rather continue playing politics than find solutions. Their actions will hurt American families and be detrimental to our fragile economy,” Brown said in a statement Tuesday after the GOP-led House rejected the bipartisan payroll compromise that overwhelmingly passed the Senate. “Of all the ugly partisanship that has disappointed the nation this year, this latest episode will hurt hardworking Americans directly and immediately.”

A day earlier, Brown said efforts by House Republicans to scuttle the Senate bill were “irresponsible and wrong.”

Brown’s aides say the former state lawmaker has shown an independent streak since the day he defied political oddsmakers and won a January 2010 special election to succeed the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, the liberal lion who had kept the seat in Democratic hands for 46 years.

But Brown’s statements this week on the payroll tax cut appeared to be his most direct attack yet on tea party Republicans, who forced Speaker John Boehner to abandon the Senate’s two-month extension and risk a tax hike for millions of Americans on Jan. 1.

While top Democrats like Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Steny Hoyer were eager to highlight Brown bashing his GOP brethren, others are loath to give him too much credit. Instead, they’ve linked him to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, whom the Obama campaign has painted as a serial flip-flopper.

“This is far from a profile in courage. It is pure pandering by a vulnerable incumbent who is already losing in the polls,” said Matt Canter, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “Voters in Massachusetts have already figured out that they can’t count on Scott Brown. He is just the typical politician who will say or do anything to get elected. Voters up there have a nickname for this kind of thing — they call it Mitt Romney.”

Warren’s candidacy has been surging — she broke fundraising records just after joining the race, a fifth Democratic primary challenger dropped out of the race Tuesday, and a University of Massachusetts at Lowell/Boston Herald poll earlier this month showed Warren leading Brown 49 percent to 42 percent. As the lone Republican in the Bay State’s congressional delegation, Brown has had little choice but to distance himself from a tea party movement that polls show has grown increasingly unpopular among voters.

Tea party is increasingly unpopular with voters? Not around here, no one I know wants the government growing bigger and fatter with more and more regulations. It may be the questions pollsters are asking if they are hearing otherwise. The latest Polls I have heard say the vast majority thinks we have too much government, exactly a view of the tea party.

If one would go back and look at every one of Brown's campaign promises, he has not broken any. He is a true moderate and he is one of the few representatives who reads a bill before it is voted on. He is not a Tea Party candidate.....independents and veterans were his main supporters.

He has supported more Democrat bills except for those with fiscal problems. He is for bringing the debt down and he was against Obamacare. He has been a good representative for Massachusetts. It is ashame so many Democrats only vote for a candidate with a "D" by his/her name. Brown is a local whereas Warren is a transplant. He knows the people of Mass much better than she does. He certainly has more legislative experience than she does.

One question. How has the Democrat Senator or Governor of Mass. helped the middle class and the poor? NADA!!!! How will Warren bring jobs to the state as a junior senator?....won't happen. Sure, Brown is supported by large corporations especially Insurance companies, but aren't they huge employers of Massachusetts?

Republicans in Massachusetts are more or less resigned to the fact that Scott Brown faces an uphill battle if he's going to remain in the U.S. Senate. Maybe Warren will stumble later on but so far she hasn't. That poll from the conservative paper the Boston Herald a few weeks ago that had Warren up by 7 has many thinking Brown's only hope is to ride in on someone else's coattails.

In his quest to keep his Federal paycheck, that short-half-life-darling-of-the GOP-fund-rasing-circuit Scott Brown has begun throwing overboard the stated principles that got him that job so thoroughly funded by American taxpayers. However difficult it might be to be a Republican in Massachusetts, it can be even more difficult to believe a Massachusetts Republican. He wanted to make history, and he has: He will become the less-than-one-full-term wonder.

Brown leads Warren, 41 percent to 38 percent, among registered voters, according to the UMass-Lowell/Boston Herald poll. Brown holds an overwhelming lead among independents, 48 percent to 29 percent. He also takes 18 percent of voters who lean Democrat